More Media Mischief on Baby Killing

Hardly has a week gone by when one columnist wrote a ludicrous and misleading piece on pro-lifers, and already we have another writer doing exactly the same thing. We have another pro-death opinion piece demonstrating similar sorts of mental confusion and moral imbalance.

The earlier piece and my commentary on it can be found here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/11/04/no-choice-from-the-pro-choicers/

The piece in today’s Melbourne Age covers the same story and uses the same twisted logic and suffers from the same ethical diarrhoea. Both pieces mentioned the Occupy protestors, and both complained about peaceful pro-life vigils outside of abortion mills in Melbourne. And both pieces insisted that these pro-lifers must be moved on.

Suzy Freeman-Greene, like Susie O’Brien before her, displays a rather large deficit in clear thinking and moral reasoning. Neither one can see through the logic of their own reckless presuppositions, and neither one will allow facts to get in the way of their pro-death ideology.

The easiest way to cut through their moral fog is to point out the moral equivalence of their position to that of a very similar issue of a few centuries ago. Indeed, simply replace a few terms and we all can see the utter bankruptcy of their positions.

For example, Freeman-Greene says this: “Terminating a pregnancy is a deeply private matter. Women should not be subjected to harassment and surveillance on the morning of the operation. They deserve better.” To see the utter foolishness of this, simply see how others argued the very same thing not all that long ago:

“Keeping a slave is a deeply private matter. People should not be subjected to harassment and surveillance when they purchase a slave. They deserve better.” Like slavery, abortion is not at all a private matter but a basic human rights issue. In both cases those promoting these activities have sought to convince us that the person in question (a black or an unborn baby) is in fact a non-person, and can therefore be treated as we please.

Just as the slave owner could treat a slave as mere property and not as a human being, so today the pro-aborts want to treat the unborn as mere blobs of tissue instead of unique persons with every right to life as they have. We now rightly deplore the depraved logic of the pro-slavery crowd, but we don’t yet seem to see the same conceptual ugliness of the pro-abortion brigade.

Freeman-Greene cites a study which shows that women going to the killing centres feel uncomfortable about the protestors: “70 per cent felt stigmatised by them”. Of course they feel stigmatised. A group of peaceful anti-slavery protestors holding pictures of poor abused black people would also make slave buyers feel stigmatised as well.

In the same way showing pictures of bloodied and battered baby seals makes the seal killers feel stigmatised. That is the whole idea: to raise public consciousness about these bloody activities. If a woman feels guilty about going to an abortion mill, perhaps that is a very good thing indeed. It shows us that she is still a real person with a conscience.

It is only when the conscience gets fully deadened that such guilt and shame no longer can produce the desired effect. Guilt and shame are inbuilt warning devices, seeking to alert us to a course of action which must be reversed, and pronto.

And if the worst these women feel is some stigmatisation or guilt trips, at least they can still live to reflect on it all. The end result of abortion is only always just one thing: a dead baby. The baby has absolutely no choice in the matter, and he or she does not even have the luxury of feeling stigmatised or not – only living people can experience that – or anything else.

I have not been the only commentator to write on these matters. When the first article came out last week, one writer managed to get an opinion piece into a website, and it is worth mentioning. Joel Hodge examined the issue of sidewalk protests, and discussed the calls to move them away from abortion mills.

Says Hodge, the Occupy crowd is not at all like the pro-life movement: “Most people (including the Mayor) see a difference between permanently occupying a public place which makes it inaccessible to others, and occasionally congregating on a footpath that still remains accessible. The irony, of course, is that the great mantra of the pro-abortion movement, about the integrity and control that a woman should have over her body, does not seem to apply to those who have an opposing view. If there is a chance, it seems that the state should take control of the bodies of protesters, disrespect their rights and forcefully move them on.”

And as he rightly notes, the real issue here is freedom of information and informed consent – the sort of stuff choice is all about. Women should be able to hear about the risks they may face, and the options and alternatives available to them. But the abortion mills and their media supporters want to take this choice away from women:

“The clinic supporters want people who are providing information about alternatives to abortion to not have the chance to give women, who are often confused and in difficult situations, information and opportunities about alternatives to abortion. Good information and financial support results in real choices, in which some women decide to actually allow their baby to be born. Yet, the clinic supporters want these information-providers moved on and choice denied. Why? One argument is that it is bad for business and staff turn-over. It is good to remember that abortion is a business, as well as an ideological agenda.

“As some feel threatened by the Occupy movement, it could be that the clinic supporters want the state and the police to protect their economic interests against those who provide alternatives. We should be careful when businesses call on the state, particularly in the form of police coercion, to protect their interests. These are murky waters. I’m not arguing that the clinic should not have its legal rights protected. I am arguing that the state should not be called on to do more than protect legitimate and legal rights, especially in a competitive marketplace where people are supposed to have the chance for ‘choice’.”

Yes, at the end of the day, the pro-choicers care little about genuine choice. The abortionists themselves are simply about making money – lots of money. They do not want women to hear the truth about their greedy practices, and they don’t want the public to know either.

In the same way, the slave traders did not want the public to know what they were up to. They wanted to paint a pretty picture of an immoral trade. But campaigners like Wilberforce did everything they could to let the public know what the reality in fact was.

That is just what the pro-life street vigils are all about: offering important information and real informed choices to the public at large and to these women in particular. People like O’Brien and Freeman-Greene want to strip away that right of the pro-lifers, and ban that information from getting to those who need it the most.

What an anti-choice bunch those “pro-choicers” are.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/some-occupy-to-protest-others-to-hamper-harangue-and-hurt-20111111-1nbn4.html
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3638758.html

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14 Replies to “More Media Mischief on Baby Killing”

  1. I have just finished reading Abby Johnson’s book unPlanned. Abby worked for 8 years as a director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. Highly recommended reading.

    Annette Nestor.

  2. Thanks Bill.
    Christians needs to keep raising this issue up in whatever forums they can – the media blackout is one thing, the church blackout is another. As long as we don’t ever hear about this in our churches, bible studies and and conversations the more we are condoning it by our silence.
    Recently, a close Christian friend suggested that any effort to stand against abortion should be done quietly in consideration of how many women in our midst are silently suffering because of having abortions in their youth (I think it was her way of rebuking me for speaking too much and too loudly about it).
    Obviously, her point indicates the exact opposite is true.
    True care for women is in opposing this loudly and preventing others from making the same mistake.

    I found Chuck Colson’s “breaking the spiral of silence” article useful
    http://www.crosswalk.com/news/breakpoint-with-chuck-colson/breaking-the-spiral-of-silence.html

    Annette Williams

  3. Bill,

    I write this from Munich Germany where yesterday I visited Dachau Concentration Camp, just about 20km to the north-west. Dachau was the first camp set up in 1933 when the Nazis came to power and it was primarily used to house political prisoners, although that criteria expanded later. It was also one of the last to be liberated as it was close to the middle of the two fronts at the end of the war. As I did the tour with the guide I was struck with the similarities with so much of political correctness these days and how there is a level of irony or cognitive dissonance within many people’s perspective of Nazi history as they simultaneously embrace similar modes of thinking in 2011.

    The attempted muzzling of opponents to abortion and other issues parallels early Nazi tactics exactly. Using propaganda to sanitise their methods to the general population and giving guidance to the guards to not look their prisoners in the eye so as to facilitate the dehumanisation of ‘undesirables’ was all part of the methodology to create a haze around what was really going on.

    I sometimes find it astounding that militant abortion proponents will actually articulate this very thing; namely, that because the unborn are still forming and lack life experience, that somehow this justifies considering them less than human. Amazing – nobody has the power to decide whether or not anybody else is human.

    Truth does not need to be massaged or guided. It just is what it is. Abortion kills a living human being deserving of protection not dehumanisation specifically because it is small and weak and there are evil people who make a living from this.

    A clear parallel with the pro-death camp of 2011 and the 1940s is that they both want to stomp on the truth and therefore those who tell it.

    Another question – how do we feel about those church leaders of the Nazi era who failed to speak up? I know what I must choose to do, not in small part due to the fact I was an unplanned pregnancy and also as I have heard some of the stories from both my German parents who grew up during WW2. There was a large sign at Dachau that said ‘NIE WIEDER’ (Never again). As I looked at it, I wondered, ‘Really?’.

    Mark Rabich

  4. Bill, I followed the link to Joel Hodges article and the comments in rebuttal were pretty heavy.

    However, some made the claim that protesters exceeded the bounds by harassing, haranguing, abusing and assaulting staff and customers.

    How does one rebut such comments?

    John Angelico

  5. Thanks John

    By telling the truth. I will ask one guy who has been there often, and wrote it up, to offer his thoughts here.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  6. Hi Bill,

    Here’s the piece I submitted to the Herald Sun in response to Susie O’Brien. Unfortunately it was not published:

    My wife and I have joined those praying for women and the lives of their babies outside the East Melbourne Abortion Clinic about 100 times now.

    Contrary to Susie O’Brien’s article I have only ever seen peaceful prayer and help offered. The only person who ever shouts is the security guard employed by the clinic. The only people who are hateful, judgemental and insulting are the pro-abortion passers-by who resort to the same sort of insults Susie uses in her article. We never answer back in kind. I have never seen any woman hindered from entering the premises, but this doesn’t stop the clinic staff regularly calling the police claiming that we do.

    We simply offer these mothers a pamphlet explaining the realities and risks of abortion. Women are also offered financial, babysitting or any other help they may need to keep their baby or put it up for adoption.

    It is ironic that the pro-abortionists talk about choice, when that is exactly what we offer women. If the mothers do not wish to talk to us or wish to enter the clinic then that is where we feel our responsibility ends.

    But many hundreds of women have gratefully accepted this offer of help and are now so thankful that they saved their baby’s life. Sometimes we receive letters, with pictures of their beautiful child, thanking us for being there and for giving them hope and support in what seemed like a hopeless situation for them at the time.

    It is very sad that Susie chooses to demonize us as ‘rabid’, ‘a mob’ and ‘unhinged and unsafe’; but the most personally hurtful accusation is when she castigates the parents of the pre-school children. I can say with some confidence that these children are my own, because I have never seen other children there. According to Susie these “parents scream abuse and hurl vitriol at people they don’t know”. What abuse was that Susie? My wife and I are professional mildly spoken people and would never behave in the way you suggest.

    We take our children with us because we believe it is important to bring them up not to look the other way when evil is condoned by our society; even when that evil is legalised. And when more than one in four children conceived in Australia is killed by abortion, and when all legal protection for the unborn is removed up to the moment of birth in Victoria, then we cannot look the other way.

    Susie also tries to imply a connection between the murder of a guard ten years ago outside the clinic and the regular helpers and prayers. This man was a mentally unstable loner who had only a tangential association with the pro-life movement. Are we really then to conclude that, despite his actions being completely contrary to our peaceful Christian ethos, the killer was actually one of us and “even stood among their ranks”?

    In fact, those who pray outside this clinic are not there to judge or to condemn anyone. Yes, our governments need to enact equal protection for unborn children – the same protection that every other Australian enjoys; but this is something we address through the political process. Outside the clinic we are there solely to offer information, assistance, alternatives and hope to the many hurting and vulnerable women who feel that they have no other choice.

    I find it very strange that despite alleging in vivid detail the “intimidating, abusive and threatening” protests which “regularly turn violent” Susie does not produce a single photograph or video of anyone behaving in such a manner. It is rather telling that the image used with her article is of the Occupy Protesters! Surely Susie could have taken her own video or photographs of the ‘harassment’ she writes so luridly about?

    I encourage those who are interested in the truth to come along one morning, say hello to us, and see for themselves what the situation really is.

    Mansel Rogerson

  7. Nice work Bill.
    Here’s a thought. I reckon every time abortion=murder is pointed out, the FATHER should always be brought into the picture.
    It’s not just a Mum and a baby.
    From the (limited) exposure I’ve had, irresponsible fathers and inconvenienced relatives are the main sources of unborn baby killing-pressure.
    Wouldn’t that be the most conducive to legislation – making it illegal to COERCE someone into having an abortion? Might be the first turn-around point…
    Tim Lovett

  8. I have had several friends who have experienced the pain of choosing to abort their babies in their teens and the subsequent guilt and shame they experience throughout their adult lives. Each of them (without exception) were pressured to do so by family/boyfriend or both. None were offered the support or help they needed to keep the baby nor were they given any truthful information about the abortion process by anyone. None of the clinics offered any real counselling and they were all told that they would “feel relief and be able to get on with their lives” after the abortion. One friend in particular had to cross through a line of protestors to enter the clinic on the day she ended her pregnancy and to be fair I have no idea (and neither does she) which group they were from, but she remembers quite vividly the banners and photographs of aborted babies etc that they were carrying. She tells me that having to cross that line added even more trauma to an already traumatic experience and she feels it has added to her feeling of guilt and shame ever since. I am (and she is) pro-life,passionately so, and am completely behind giving women and girls the correct information about abortion and showing them the alternatives and providing the resources they need to keep their babies, but I wonder what the best way to do this is. I never thought I would be the type of person who would wave a placard or attend a protest but more and more often I think I am. I do however think it is important that no matter how good the intentions of pro-life protestors it is absolutely vital that they remember to hate the sin but love the sinner and remember that many of these women/girls are terrified, feel alone, hopeless and without support and feel they have no alternative but to make this choice. We must remember to extend compassion and grace and love and forgiveness to them just as Jesus does. I do not by any means mean we should support their decision or choice but we must support the individual and love them despite their choices.
    Chris Peers

  9. Chris I think the way protesters behave at abortion clinics has changes over the years. Where once there were photos of aborted babies there are now people praying and offering information and support. 40 days for life seems to be a very effective pro-life movement of prayer outside clinics.

    I believe different techniques are needed for offering hope to pregnant women as compared with political action aimed at getting laws changed.

    I am grateful to the many post-abortive women willing to tell their story in hope of enabling others not to follow in their path.

    Kylie Anderson

  10. Thank you Bill for this blog which makes me recall the words of Christ: “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The agenda of the abortion industry can only survive under the cover of darkness and euphemisms. The truth, if known (and accepted) would kill this industry.

    I have often wondered what would happen if climate science language was used in the abortion debate. How would pro-life advocates would be treated if they made statements such as: “The science is settled. A human being is created immediately after conception.” While there is more certainty in this reality than anything in the climate debate, one will often find that the same advocates, who take climate science as a matter of belief, refuse to belief in scientific fact when it asks them to change their attitude towards the sanctity of human life.

    Bill, this reality saddens me in many ways. Some believe that only science can save humanity. But when the darkness of sin begins to cloud our judgement, sometimes we cannot see truth even when that scientific fact is right in front of us.

    Alex Burton

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